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Jun. 14th, 2006 11:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
usernamenumberDay 1 (written on day three, based on notes taken at the time)
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The first day of actual work this week was, as I mentioned previously, extremely humbling. We got up around 7:30 and headed to the mess hall for breakfast, which consisted of suspiciously greenish eggs, grits (mmm... I miss grits) and cereal. As we got our breakfasts, we also assembled sack lunches for ourselves. Along with a protein bar, some cookies and a bottle of water I grabbed one of their pre-made sandwitches. In retrospect Egg Salad was not the best choice given that the conditions we were about to head out into. Even after keeping it in an icebox all day I ended up deciding not to risk egg and mayonnaise in 95 degree weather and contented myself with the other components of my lunch plus some cereal I'd kept from breakfast.
At 8:15 we met our "bus captain", Jen, who will be supervising our group and another throughouth the week. The two groups have been assigned houses about a block apart and she flits back and forth between the sites answering questions, helping out and generally being very cool.
We all piled onto a schoolbus (one of about four heading out that morning, each with a load of volunteers) and hit the road. Camp Hope, where we're staying, is in the middle of the wastelands. Almost every home has been destroyed here. Maybe someday some of these people will come back, but I'm sure many will not. An abandoned trailer on the side of the road simply had "Please crush", spray-painted on the side before the owners left. We drove through this sort of scene, interrupted periodically by places where society was still intact like an open Walgreens or a busy intersection, for about 15 minutes before arriving at the house we had been assinged to. The first thing everyone did was take a walk around, just to see what exactly we'd be dealing with.
Moving through the house, which had been barely disturbed since the hurricane, was like walking through the ruins of pompei: not just a snapshot of an event, but of a moment. In the bedroom a CD called "The sounds of sensuality: For an intimate evening" was still in the player and on the bed, I kid you not, was a copy of the Pocket Kama Sutra. Water pressure and age had compressed it into a single lump of wood pulp about an inch thick, with only the cover still legible.
Our job was to "gut" this house. That means emptying every room, every cabinet and every closet, pulling up all the carpet and flooring and pulling down all the drywall, insulation and light fixtures. The contents of the house were to be separated into four piles: valuables, trash, appliances and hazardous chemicals. The latter category included booze which, true to 'Nowlans form, we did find in abundance. To aid us in our task we were given an array of crowbars, sledge hammers, shovels and wheelbarrows and then set to it. My biggest accomplishment was helping to pull down the cork board and drywall on one side of the garage and to get the kitchen emptied out. Day one day was all about reality checks. By the time we stopped I was more exhausted and discouraged than I've been about anything in recent memory. At least I wasn't the only one, though, as we found ourselves in agreement that handing an engineer a shovel does not make him a construction worker.
I think I would have stood up to the strain better if it hadn't been for the mandatory PPE (Personal Protection Equipment) -- hard hat, goggles and a filter mask, like what house painters often use but thicker because of an extra layer of carbon to keep out the nastier smells. The mask was the main problem because it pulls air in through the filter better than it expels it. As a result, it feels like half of each inhalation is taken up by carbon dioxide from the previous exhalation. Between the exertion, the heat and the lack of oxygen I found myself getting light-headed and out-of-breath despite stopping fairly regularly. By the end of the work day it felt like no amount of resting was going to make the heat go away. I decided that this kind of work must really not for me and began to worry more and more about the next day. On day one we actually finished an hour and a half earlier than we normally would. If I was this exhausted today, how can I possibly do more tomorrow?
The amazing thing is that here at the camp we are relatively old. There's a huge number of high-schoolers and church groups that range from high school to college that are here helping out too. And some people are staying for a month or more, not just a week. Like I said: humbling.
One thing about this work is that you sleep _hard_. As such, I'm falling asleep and it's past my bedtime so I'll leave it at Day One for tonight and put up the rest as I get around to fleshing out my notes. Apologies for any grevious spelling/grammar/sense-making problems in this post. After a full day of work followed by a lovely night out I'm too tired to even proofread.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The first day of actual work this week was, as I mentioned previously, extremely humbling. We got up around 7:30 and headed to the mess hall for breakfast, which consisted of suspiciously greenish eggs, grits (mmm... I miss grits) and cereal. As we got our breakfasts, we also assembled sack lunches for ourselves. Along with a protein bar, some cookies and a bottle of water I grabbed one of their pre-made sandwitches. In retrospect Egg Salad was not the best choice given that the conditions we were about to head out into. Even after keeping it in an icebox all day I ended up deciding not to risk egg and mayonnaise in 95 degree weather and contented myself with the other components of my lunch plus some cereal I'd kept from breakfast.
At 8:15 we met our "bus captain", Jen, who will be supervising our group and another throughouth the week. The two groups have been assigned houses about a block apart and she flits back and forth between the sites answering questions, helping out and generally being very cool.
We all piled onto a schoolbus (one of about four heading out that morning, each with a load of volunteers) and hit the road. Camp Hope, where we're staying, is in the middle of the wastelands. Almost every home has been destroyed here. Maybe someday some of these people will come back, but I'm sure many will not. An abandoned trailer on the side of the road simply had "Please crush", spray-painted on the side before the owners left. We drove through this sort of scene, interrupted periodically by places where society was still intact like an open Walgreens or a busy intersection, for about 15 minutes before arriving at the house we had been assinged to. The first thing everyone did was take a walk around, just to see what exactly we'd be dealing with.
Moving through the house, which had been barely disturbed since the hurricane, was like walking through the ruins of pompei: not just a snapshot of an event, but of a moment. In the bedroom a CD called "The sounds of sensuality: For an intimate evening" was still in the player and on the bed, I kid you not, was a copy of the Pocket Kama Sutra. Water pressure and age had compressed it into a single lump of wood pulp about an inch thick, with only the cover still legible.
Our job was to "gut" this house. That means emptying every room, every cabinet and every closet, pulling up all the carpet and flooring and pulling down all the drywall, insulation and light fixtures. The contents of the house were to be separated into four piles: valuables, trash, appliances and hazardous chemicals. The latter category included booze which, true to 'Nowlans form, we did find in abundance. To aid us in our task we were given an array of crowbars, sledge hammers, shovels and wheelbarrows and then set to it. My biggest accomplishment was helping to pull down the cork board and drywall on one side of the garage and to get the kitchen emptied out. Day one day was all about reality checks. By the time we stopped I was more exhausted and discouraged than I've been about anything in recent memory. At least I wasn't the only one, though, as we found ourselves in agreement that handing an engineer a shovel does not make him a construction worker.
I think I would have stood up to the strain better if it hadn't been for the mandatory PPE (Personal Protection Equipment) -- hard hat, goggles and a filter mask, like what house painters often use but thicker because of an extra layer of carbon to keep out the nastier smells. The mask was the main problem because it pulls air in through the filter better than it expels it. As a result, it feels like half of each inhalation is taken up by carbon dioxide from the previous exhalation. Between the exertion, the heat and the lack of oxygen I found myself getting light-headed and out-of-breath despite stopping fairly regularly. By the end of the work day it felt like no amount of resting was going to make the heat go away. I decided that this kind of work must really not for me and began to worry more and more about the next day. On day one we actually finished an hour and a half earlier than we normally would. If I was this exhausted today, how can I possibly do more tomorrow?
The amazing thing is that here at the camp we are relatively old. There's a huge number of high-schoolers and church groups that range from high school to college that are here helping out too. And some people are staying for a month or more, not just a week. Like I said: humbling.
One thing about this work is that you sleep _hard_. As such, I'm falling asleep and it's past my bedtime so I'll leave it at Day One for tonight and put up the rest as I get around to fleshing out my notes. Apologies for any grevious spelling/grammar/sense-making problems in this post. After a full day of work followed by a lovely night out I'm too tired to even proofread.
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Date: 2006-06-15 04:17 pm (UTC)you are going to get a lot of kisses when you get home. after you shower. :D